Flash Tracer is a must-have Firefox Plugin that, as the name suggests, shows you the trace outputs from a swf right in your browser. I’ve had to install it on a few different machines and each time I always forget how, so I wrote out some step by step instructions that I want to share with the internet.

1. Make sure you have the Flash Debug Player: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html. Click on “Download the Macintosh Flash Player 10 Plugin content debugger (Intel-based Macs).”
2. Install FlashTracer: http://www.sephiroth.it/examples/firefox/extensions/flashtracer.xpi
3. Create an mm.cfg file.
   1. Open Terminal
   2. Locate your root folder (type “cd ..” once or twice. To make sure, type “ls -l” and if you see folders like “Library” and “Users” in the right column, you’re good)
   3. Type “cd Library/Application\ Support/Macromedia”
   4. Type “pico”
   5. Type “ErrorReportingEnable=1″ hit enter, and type “TraceOutputFileEnable=1″ (no quotes)
   6. Press Ctrl + O (even though you’re on a Mac, it’s Ctrl, not Command)
   7. Type “mm.cfg” and press enter
   8. You can confirm that the file has been created by navigating to that folder in Finder and opening mm.cfg with a text editor.
4. Restart Firefox
5. In Firefox, click Tools > FlashTracer. In the FlashTracer column, click on the orange wrench icon at the bottom right.
6. Click on “browse” next to “Select Output File” and navigate to “/Users/{username}/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt.” There should be a flashlog.txt file there by now - if there isn’t, go to a website that has Flash content on it (thefwa.com) and it should be created.
7. That should do it. Restart Firefox again to be sure.

In addition to helping debug your projects, using Flash Tracer on other people’s sites is a nice form of entertainment.